Towards an Independent Wales

What is the biggest obstacle to obtaining independence for Wales?

I think simply put, it is that the people believe that they cannot afford it, and that is why support has never reached 50%. The stark fact is that Wales’ fiscal deficit within the UK stands at £4,300 per capita, which with a population of 3.2 million equates to 14 billion pounds a year: tax revenue per capita in Wales is 76% of the UK average, but spending is 108 percent, leading to a shortfall (Wikipedia). Other things being equal, an independent populace would have to raise that capital annually though additional taxation.

But if it could be shown that independence could be followed by an increase in the nation’s wealth, I think matters would change irreversibly.

How to achieve that?

Here are what I consider to be four of the best routes to follow.

1. Introduce a Land Tax.

2. Secure manufacturing plants for Chinese electric vehicles.

3. Import Russian fuels for use and resale.

4. Reduce the defence budget.

1. Introduce a Land Tax

Did you know that there used to be a Land Tax in the UK? Land taxes had been in place for a thousand years until abolished by the Finance Act 1963, the year Sir Alec Douglas Hume (pal of the Scottish grouse moor owning fraternity) succeeded Harold Macmillan as prime minister, himself being booted out the following year by Harold Wilson.

It was never reinstated, not even by Labour governments!

Did you know that half of England and Wales is owned by fewer than 1% of its population?

Major owners include the Duke of Buccleuch, the King, several large grouse moor estates, and the entrepreneur James Dyson. Also prominent on the list are the Woburn estate, which is owned by the Duke of Bedford, and the Badminton estate in Gloucestershire, owned by the Duke and Duchess of Beaufort. In 2023 alone, King Charles and Prince William’s “private fiefdoms,” the Duchy of Lancaster and the Duchy of Cornwall, raised £27.4 million and £23.6 million respectively for the British royal family.

Guy Shrubsole in Who Owns England estimates that “the aristocracy and gentry still own around 30% of England”. This may even be an underestimate, as the owners of 17% of England and Wales remain undeclared at the Land Registry, the public body responsible for keeping a database of land and property in England and Wales. The most likely owners of this undeclared land are aristocrats, as many of their estates have remained in their families for centuries. Some were given to their ancestors after the defeat of England in 1066 and have remained so ever since. It seems a poor reason for it still to be in their hands almost a thousand years later.

I do not have access to the relative proportions in England and Wales, and there is no one place where you can go to find out the complete picture about ownership of land and assets in Wales:

https://www.iwa.wales/agenda/2022/02/who-owns-wales/

so we have to rely on some guesswork. The area of Wales is about 5 million acres. If 70% of this were taxable, 3.5 million, what could a land tax raise? The taxation rate would depend on the use to which the land is put, agricultural land (now priced at 9,000 pounds an acre) would attract a low rate. Let’s work with an average rate, on a sliding scale, something like this, but the actual rates would best be determined once all the survey data has been collected.

The first 5 acres, no charge.

The next 50 acres at 2,500 pounds an acre per annum.

The remainder at 1,000 pounds an acre per annum.

If the bulk of the plots fell into the first charged category, it would raise

2,500 x 3,500,000 = 8,750,000,000: say 9 billion pounds.

On achieving independence, a law would be needed for all landowners in Wales to register their property with a newly inaugurated Land Registry of Wales. Any land not registered within 12 months and any without documented legal title would be confiscated. The tax would then be levied on all holdings above a certain level to remove normal householders, as set out above, perhaps 5 acres, and there would be concessions, for example, to charity owned and land actively farmed by its owner. (It is estimated that 88% of the land in Wales is farmed, but a very high proportion must be in the hands of major landowners). Failure to pay the tax would also lead to confiscation, and in such cases the resident could remain in occupation but would still be due to pay the tax which would now be considered rent. Failure to pay the rent, and the bailiffs are at the door. Foreign landowners would naturally be charged a higher rate than Welsh nationals, and this could be extended down to individual house ownership, to perhaps partly address the second home problem.

By way of illumination, one very large example in Wales of which we do have some knowledge is the Crown Estate. It includes the coastal seabed up to 12 nautical miles, approximately 65% of the foreshore as well as the Welsh river bed and ports and marinas. The estate also owns over 50,000 acres of Welsh upland and common land, mainly rough grazing land, and 250,000 acres of mineral deposits and the rights to gold and silver. The value of the Welsh Crown Estate had risen to £603m by 2022. The revenue in 2021 was £8.7m which seems a paltry return - 1.4% - for such a valuation. Of the Crown Estate revenue, 75% goes to the UK Treasury whilst 25% is given to the monarch.

How does the above formula work out for those 300 acres?

It’s (50 x 2,500) + (245 x 1,000) = 125,000 + 245,000 = 370,000 pounds

which is a mere 4.25% of the profit. Looks reasonable.

In Wales, there have been multiple calls for the Crown Estate in Wales to be devolved, including by Plaid Cymru, Welsh Labour and the Welsh Liberal Democrats. An opinion poll in May 2023 also showed strong support for devolving the estate in Wales with a majority of 58% of the people of Wales supporting compared to 19% who are opposed and 23% who don't know. Poll breakdown showed that all major political party voters supported devolution of the estate in Wales.

Thinks: I wonder if the Crown Estate is registered at the Land Registry….

Another interesting case study at 800 acres is Tryweryn.

It’s (50 x 2,500) + (750 x 1,000) = 125,000 + 750,000 = 875,000 pounds

It was flooded to create the Llyn Celyn reservoir amidst mass protests in the 1960s to provide water for Liverpool via Liverpool Corporation Waterworks.

Following the Water Act of 1973, services were taken over from the corporation by the North West Water Authority, which was privatised in 1989, ultimately winding up as a part of United Utilities. It was reported that United Utilities was the worst-polluting water company in the UK in 2022, with "10 of the country’s 20 pipes that spilled the most sewage in 2022 [being] owned by United Utilities", and that they had discharged raw sewage into the River Ellen in Cumbria for almost 7,000 hours that year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Utilities

United Utilities is a privately owned company listed on the London Stock Exchange. The company paid out over £1bn in dividends to its shareholders between 2013 and 2017 instead of dealing with the hundreds of millions of litres of water that leak from its infrastructure. Steve Mogford, chief executive of United Utilities, earned almost £14 million in salary, bonuses, pensions and other benefits between 2013 and 2019.

https://www.warringtonguardian.co.uk/news/17696062.united-utilities-boss-steve-mogford-slammed-2m-salary/

Llyn Celyn is owned by Dwr Cymru. Presumably United Utilities makes some payment for the water supply. Given that the average water billing in the UK Is 448 pounds and so the 208,000 Liverpool householders are forking out almost 100 million pounds a year for their supply, a substantial portion of this should be filtering back to Wales.

Is it?

2. Secure manufacturing plants for Chinese electric vehicles

Automobiles are the world’s largest industrial sector, with manufacturing and sales together totalling nearly $10 trillion per year, almost twice that of any other. China’s share of the global electric vehicle (EV) market reached 76% in October 2024, reflecting strong demand for EVs in the country even as western tariffs risk hobbling exports. Between January and October, world sales of EVs reached 14.1 million units, with 69% of those sales in China.

China’s electric vehicle manufacturers are now moving on to the second phase of their development, which is to capture world markets, partly by manufacturing in other countries, this partly to sidestep massive import duties being imposed by, for example, the EU, the USA and Canada on vehicles of Chinese manufacture.

BYD (Build Your Dreams!), the world's largest EV maker with the capacity to produce 4 million cars in China annually, has been building car factories in Thailand, Brazil, Hungary and Uzbekistan. They are looking for a location in Mexico to produce 150,000 cars annually for local sales solely. The BYD Yangwang U9, is pictured below.

Chery Auto, China's largest automaker by export volume, said last year it would invest $400 million to set up a factory in Argentina producing 100,000 cars annually by 2030, and a plant in Brazil which has an annual capacity of 150,000 units. It is holding talks with the Italian government to manufacture there, and according to the Financial Times, is considering building a car factory in the UK this decade.

SAIC, China's second-largest auto exporter with its MG-branded cars, is looking for a site in Europe to set up a plant for EV production. There used to be an MG factory, remember, British owned, at Abingdon, then Birmingham, until it was virtually given away with Rover by Blair’s government? SAIC has overseas car plants in Thailand, Indonesia and India. It also has an assembly plant in Pakistan.

Geely has factories in Belarus and Indonesia. It also owns Lotus and Volvo. Its Zeekr brand will be the first Chinese to be exported to the USA this year.

There are many other Chinese EV manufacturers yet to venture out. Invite them!

What market could a new Wales-based factory aim for in the immediate region? The UK home market, 70 million population. The UK now has a free trade agreement with EFTA, that’s mainly Norway, Switzerland, and Iceland, another 15 million, rich populations. And the EU on its doorstep, if its products are allowed in without excessive penalties.

What would it be worth: let’s say a total volume of 500,000 annually, average sale price perhaps 20,000 pounds, that’s a turnover of 10 billion pounds, profit typically 10%, that’s 1 billion, corporation tax 25%, so 0.25 billion for the kitty. And while such plants are very highly automated and so their contribution to local employment is somewhat limited, they can source many parts from local suppliers, and so their impact in the community is by no means negligable.

You will say, well that’s just a dent in the requirement, but should be seen as the spearhead in a revival restoring the manufacturing strength which has been all but lost over 40 years since Thatcher began the demolition (1) and took the UK progressively from manufacturing to service industries to spite the unions and give all power to the City of London. Three more like that and we are a billion nearer the target.

By way of illustrating the state of British manufacturing, the chart below shows productive GDP (that is, excluding service industry contribution) in PPP terms: that is to say, in terms of the real value of the national currencies. Spot the UK.

PS. In case you are still unaware, here is why we should work with China.

China currently leads in 57 of the 64 advanced technologies in the 5 year period between 2019 and 2023 (ASPI). USA leads in 7. China led 52 of the 64 technologies in the 5 year period between 2018 and 2022 in the 2023 report; it took the lead in 5 more technologies one year later. Between 2003 and 2007, the US led in 60 of the 64 technologies and China led in only 3. As you will gather, the UK, once a technological powerhouse, has been invisible for some time.

But we cannot work effectively with China when tied to Westminster because the UK is currently part of the US-driven anti-China policy. By way of example of the sheer pettiness and spite that results, a Chinese company which has worked in partnership with my family’s UK company since 2017 just recently subscribed to exhibit in a forthcoming product exhibition in Britain. The CEO and her staff have been refused business visas to enter the country.

3. Import Russian fuels

The third option is a bit different in that instead of trying simply to raise tax income, it also seeks to reduce the cost of living for ordinary citizens.

In April 2022, gas and electricity bills rose sharply for most households in the UK. The increase in the price cap means that a household buying the typical amount has seen its bills rise now by 54% from £1,277 a year to £1,971. And why did that happen, do you wonder?

So, gas is now costing 7p per kWh. How can we get that back to where it was, nearer 4p? Obviously, by obtaining a supply of Russian Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG). So let’s look for some figures and do some sums.

Russia is currently exporting 17.5 million tons of LPG annually sanctions-free to the EU at a cost of $7.5 billion. That’s 17.5 billion kg. The density of LPG is 0.50 to 0.58 kg/L so let’s take the median, and so that’s 32.5 billion litres and the cost is therefore $0.23 per litre. One litre delivers 26 megajoules which is 7.22 kWh. So one kWh costs $0.032 which is 2.5p. So that looks like a good start. But there are costs to add to that. Transport by tanker, probably from Crimea; offloading, transport, storage; and a reasonable profit margin for the importer. Perhaps, then, double the selling price to 5p, so we are just about there.

Much of electricity in the UK is produced from gas. It has to be generated, the efficiency perhaps, about 40%, so it costs households much more than gas in terms of energy per penny. But the saving in gas supply cost would make a similarly significant reduction in domestic electricity cost too. So without promising great accuracy I would estimate that the recent years’ total fuel cost rise - gas and electricity - could be wholly reversed, saving Welsh households about 700 pounds a year. There are about 1,350,000 households in Wales, so we can knock another billion off the fiscal deficit.

So how to implement this?

The gas distribution network is publicly owned and private companies pay to use it. An independent Welsh Government could set up its own gas distribution company, importing Russian LPG and cutting out the middle man, easily undercutting current gas suppliers. It would set up a nationalised LPG distribution centre at Milford Haven dock (thanks, Rilme). This would supply households and generating plants across Wales at the lower cost.

But the gas network of course extends to the whole of Great Britain, and so the service could very profitably be extended across England and Scotland, much to the benefit of those nations’ citizens. LPG could also be shipped to Ireland, which has even higher gas charges than the UK. But it doesn’t even end there.

Similar conditions apply to Russian crude oil. India is currently making a fortune buying Russian oil, refining and reselling it to other countries, and China is a major buyer. An independent Wales is not obliged to apply self-harming sanctions to trading with Russia. Here is a table of countries importing discounted Russian crude as at April 2024

So the Welsh publicly owned company could import oil too and sell it to refineries in Wales and elsewhere. UK usage is a about 0.5 billion barrels a year. A $5 profit per barrel on a 20% market share would realise around 0.5 billion, and a similar share of the wider gas market perhaps around the same.

4. The defence budget

The UK defence budget is currently 54 billion per annum which is 2.3% of national expenditure, but the current government will raise it to 2.5%. (Trump has called for NATO countries to raise that to 3% and recently even talked it up to 5% but it is said that he will settle for 3.5%, and the UK will be forced to go along with it. Make no mistake, you can kiss goodbye to your welfare state in the coming years). Welsh contribution to the budget currently with about 4% of the UK population is therefore 2.2 billion. This could easily be virtually eliminated on independence.

The UK is one of the leading donors to Ukraine. To date, while removing fuel cost support from pensioners, it has pledged £12.8 billion in support to Ukraine since February 2022 (additional to defence budget?), has committed to providing Ukraine with annual military assistance of £3 billion until at least 2031, and “for as long as needed to support Ukraine.” A 15-page declaration, signed by Starmer on January 16, 2025, lays out a framework for cooperation with a primary focus on military collaboration over the next century, including the potential establishment of military bases in Ukraine.

But this foreign adventurism of course does not begin there. The British military has personnel stationed at approximately 145 overseas military installations located across 42 countries (Wikipedia). It has nuclear weapons (well, not really, they are American but we pay for them just the same). The National Audit Office (NAO), a government watchdog, in 2023 reported an alarming £38.2bn increase in forecast costs at the MoD’s Defence Nuclear Organisation to £99.5bn over the decade to 2033 – a 62% increase on estimates a year earlier.

It has a partly broken down naval fleet which it sends to cruise up and down the South China Sea to annoy China. And yet its entire military force could sit comfortably in Wembley Stadium and still leave room for Cardiff City’s supporters. If the UK unwisely decided to declare war on Russia, which by its actions in Ukraine it is getting desperately close to doing so ipso facto, it would be turned to a sheet of glass in fifteen minutes.

This map presumably represents just the main overseas UK bases.

Wales needs none of these things (neither does England, for that matter, but if you are a UK taxpayer, you are paying for all this warmongering). Wales would quietly get on with managing its own affairs and work towards friendship and collaboration with other civilised nations, having no interest in interfering in their internal affairs, or in supporting genocide and headchopping rebel groups in the Middle East, and generally creating chaos around the world. It’s time to break away from paying for this madness.

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A combination of these four approaches would comfortably dispense with the inherited financial deficit, contribute to the exchequer, and so with the forecast of improving the standard of living in Wales, provide a corresponding impetus to the desire for independence. But such are the limitations on the Senedd’s powers that all would have to wait for independence to be acted upon. It is, in truth, little more than a county council in fancy dress. Here are its proscribed activities as listed in the Wales Act 2017 (Wikipedia).

Industrial development is not a devolved item under C12 of the Wales Act 2017, but informal approaches towards a manufacturing revival could be initiated by the Welsh Government today.

So, let’s look at the annual housekeeping saving now. Add it up.

1. Land tax, sale and rent of confiscated land: 9 billion

2. Revival of manufacturing, initial target: 1 billion

3. Saving of domestic fuel bills: 1 billion

   Sale of LPG and crude oil, target: 1 billion

4. Reduction in defence contribution 2 billion

Job done. But having performed this limited study, I am now quite convinced that Wales is actually being skinned by Westminster and there is a lot, lot more to be gained, and the result would be a happier, richer, successful country.

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So, as you can see, in a nutshell, our first tasks to smooth the path into independence will be to take on the aristocracy and royalty, and make up to Russia and China - they are not your enemies - which latter will entail keeping the USA at the end of a fair sized barge pole. None of which, you will understand, can be achieved while chained to Westminster. But if you think about it, there is absolutely no point in gaining independence if you are not going to seize it and strike out in a new direction, free from those chains, and let England carry on its present course into bankruptcy.

Are you up for it?

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My next piece will consider how to generate majority support for independence and to press for a referendum. Subscribe now to receive it in your email.

WK, 17 January 2025

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